DREUBEN@eagle.wesleyan.edu) (DOUGLAS SCOTT REUBEN) (06/03/89)
Not to spoil that amusing article a few Telecoms back about the loud "clicks" you hear on old ESS Call-Waiting, but... I've noticed that on newer exchanges, mainly DMS-100 (-200?) and 5ESS niether party hears a click. The called party hears only a beep, while the person talking to the called party hears nothing. Only if the person who gets the Call Wait is talking or if there is a lot of noise in the background will you hear a small gap of silence while he receives the Call-Wait tone. This is pretty nice, but it also means that you can't tell if the person who is Call-Waiting you has hung up or not (ie, you don't answer the Call-Wait.) On the an older ESS, you would hear a final "click" after the person calling you would hang up. On a DMS (and I presume 5ESS, although I never tried it), you only hear the two Call-Wait tones, and that's it. The person Call-Waiting you could stay on the line and keep ringing for hours, and as long as you were still talking, you'd never know, and may miss other Call-Waits. (Silly, but it can happen...) (DMS's do other weird things, like not let you make a 3-way call until you connect to your other party, even if it's long distance. Most older ESS's only do this locally (or only to 'tandem' exchanges?) so if you call someone in Toronto (assuming you don't live there) and he is busy, you can 3-way that call with someone else. (Again, silly, but you may want to for some reason...) On a DMS, it *knows* you didn't complete the call, and won't give you the three-way tone, and will just drop the Toronto/busy call and give you a dial tone. I guess it all depends on how much info the switch is given... If has a way to test for call completion, I guess it uses that info when processing 3-way calls... ) Anyhow, have fun with Call-Waiting! -Doug dreuben@eagle.wesleyan.edu dreuben%eagle.weslyn@wesleyan.bitnet (and just plain old "dreuben" to locals! :-) ) (I hear the local count reading these is up to 3!!! wow!)